Guest Post: Time To Choose

Whether you're aware of it or not, a great battle is being waged around us.

It is a war of two opposing narratives: the future of our economy and our standard of living.

The dominant story, championed by flotillas of press releases and parading talking heads, tells an inspiring tale of recovery and return to growth.

The other side, less visible but with a full armament of high-caliber data, tells a very different story. One of growing instability, downside risk, and inequality.

As different as they are in substance, they both share one fundamental prediction – and this is why you should care: This battle is about to break. And when it does, one side will turn out to be much more 'right' than the other. The time for action has arrived. To position yourself in the direction of the break you think is most likely to happen.

It's time to choose a side.

The Case for Playing Offense

The past several months have seen a surge in positive stories celebrating the U.S. emergence out of recession and back to solid economic health.

1) Tapping into shale oil and gas deposits is ushering in a new energy boom. Domestic energy production is on the rise, creating jobs and increasing exports, while reducing our dependency on foreign suppliers:

The United States may be close to self-sufficiency in energy by 2030 because of a "shale revolution" in the country, said BP's chief executive officer.

2) The stock market is thriving, with several indices at record highs. Corporate earnings and investor confidence are booming, and the expectation of a Great Rotation of massive amounts of capital from low-yielding bonds into the stock market is high:

There is no official declaration, or even a formal survey. But the chatter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is about the end of the financial crisis that began in 2008 and dragged on through last summer’s spike in Spanish and Italian government bond yields. “There’s a crystallization of thought that the financial crisis is over,” says Scott Minerd, managing partner and chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, a Santa Monica (Calif.) firm with about $160 billion under management.

4) Housing, the engine of consumer wealth, is in recovery. Home prices are on the rise after years of punishing declines. And a rebound in consumer spending is visible across a wide spectrum of home-related services:

The housing rebound is broadening to other parts of the U.S. economy and will likely lend impetus to growth through 2013 and beyond.

Climbing home prices are lifting household wealth and boosting the purchasing power of consumers. Declining mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures are buttressing bank balance sheets, giving them greater leeway to lend. And rising property- tax revenue is fortifying the finances of state and local governments, alleviating pressure on them to cut budgets.

“The housing recovery will kick into a higher gear as the year progresses,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist in West Chester, Pennsylvania, for Moody’s Analytics Inc. “We’re going to get a lot of juice from the channels” through which it affects other parts of the economy.

5) Jobs are being created and consumer income is on the rise. U.S. personal income recently experienced its biggest increase in eight years. Non-farm payrolls have increased every month for the past two years. There are increasing examples of local job markets experiencing a true employment "boom":

"Employment growth in Silicon Valley is impressive, very impressive," said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. "Some might even say the job growth is cause for euphoria."

Last year, the nine-county Bay Area added about 92,000 jobs, according to the study. Of that total, Silicon Valley -- defined as Santa Clara and San Mateo counties -- accounted for 46 percent, or 42,000 jobs.

A Rosy Picture

Taken collectively, it's hard not to feel optimistic – even strongly so – about our future prospects. With these messages constantly being delivered and reinforced, it's little wonder that the status quo is not under attack. That the energy behind the Occupy movement has dissipated. Because a better tomorrow lies ahead, right?

Right?

The Case for Defense

As alluring as the offensive narrative sounds, it contradicts starkly with the preponderance of underlying data. Data that requires some – but not too much – digging beneath the headlines.

In counterpoint to the above narrative, a sampling of this data reveals the following:

1) Expensive oil is here to stay and will handicap economic growth for decades to come.Peak Oil is alive and well, despite the "shale miracle". The four major global oil producers, including BP, continue to report declining total production numbers despite more than doubling well drilling activity since 2007. Gas prices this February are the highest they've been in history:

Consumers have been spending more on gasoline than they have in nearly three decades.

With pump prices at their highest level on record for this time of year, the stage is set for an even greater climb in gasoline prices and expenditures than in 2012. Retail gasoline prices have surged 17 cents in a week to top $3.50 a gallon on average, posting the highest prices on record for the beginning of February.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Monday that gasoline expenditures in 2012 for the average U.S. household reached $2,912, or just under 4 percent of income before taxes. This was the highest estimated percentage of household income spent on gasoline in nearly three decades, with the exception of 2008, when the average household spent a similar amount.

2) Financial security valuations are dislocated from the fundamentals of the underlying companies. The trillions of dollars of liquidity pumped into the market by the Fed is, yet again, blowing asset bubbles in stocks and bonds. Respectable veteran investors from Bill Gross, to Jeremy Grantham, to Jim Rogers, to Bob Janjuah, to John Hussman are warning of a coming calamitous correction. Corporate insiders, despite their proclamations of record profitability, are voting with their feet and selling over 9 times more of their company stock than they are buying:

Insiders have been pulling out of stocks just as small investors are getting in.

There have been more than nine insider sales for every one buy over the past week among NYSE stocks, according to Vickers. The last time executives sold their company's stock this aggressively was in early 2012, just before the S&P 500 went on to correct by 10 percent to its low for the year.

"Insiders know more than the vast majority of market participants," said Enis Taner, global macro editor for RiskReversal.com. "And they're usually right over a long period of time."

3) The economic "recovery" is anemic at best, and skewed heavily to the top few percent. December saw negative GDP growth and last week saw the persistently-high unemployment rate creep back up. December's reported personal income increases was primarily a one-time event, as companies sought to pay out excess income and dividends in advance of anticipated 2013 income tax increases. Payroll taxes will rise on all employees, but carried interest and capital gains rates (how the wealthy earn their income) remain unchanged at historically low levels. Nearly two-thirds of Americans now expect anemic economic growth to define our "new normal" way of life:

More Americans believe today than they did two years ago that their country will never fully recover from the Great Recession.

Fifty-six percent of Americans surveyed by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University in August 2010 said they believed the Great Recession would permanently change the economy. In a January follow-up survey, 60 percent of respondents agreed with that sentiment.

"Five years of economic misery have profoundly diminished Americans' confidence in the economy and their outlook for the next generation," Rutgers professor and survey co-author Carl Van Horn said in a statement.

Most survey respondents -- 73 percent -- had either lost their jobs or knew somebody who had. More than half said they have less money than they did before the recession, and 61 percent believe they will never fully recover.

4) The housing market will not return to its former glory. With no real wage growth and further de-leveraging still needed, the consumer is not driving the modest price growth seen in many housing markets; instead, hedge funds are– they are buying up huge tracts of foreclosed homes, renting them out, and securitizing those rental streams. This will not result in the competitive bidding by multiple parties that drove the appreciation pre-bubble collapse. In fact, the entire concept of looking at a house as a financial investment is eschewed by the founder of the Case-Shiller Housing Index:

"Housing traditionally is not viewed as a great investment. It takes maintenance, it depreciates, it goes out of style. All of those are problems. And there's technical progress in housing. So, new ones are better."

"So, why was it considered an investment? That was a fad. That was an idea that took hold in the early 2000's. And I don't expect it to come back. Not with the same force. So people might just decide, "Yeah, I'll diversify my portfolio. I'll live in a rental." That is a very sensible thing for many people to do."

5) Our trading partners are as bad off, or worse, than we are. Global markets have rallied in recent months as the news from Europe grew quiet – despite no real resolution to the core problems occurring. And in recent days, fresh concerns about forex rates hurting competitiveness, crushing unemployment, and excessive debt have erupted. Meanwhile, Japan is everyone's leading candidate for the first developed nation of the 21st century to implode under its debts. And China, whether it is able to avoid a hard landing or not in the short term, is staring at a mid-term food and water crisis that it has no solution to.

International bankers and finance ministers warned on Saturday that Europe's crisis was not over even though the euro currency is now stabilized, it will take years to overcome economic malaise and mass unemployment in Europe.

After a private meeting of leading commercial bankers, government officials, central bankers and trade union officials, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told Reuters: "There is a clear divide between the financial markets, who think a lot of this is fixed, and the people in the real economy and particularly from our side as the governments."

6) The risk of external shocks is under-appreciated and unplanned for. Currently financial markets and our just-in-time national distribution systems are geared for clear sailing ahead. Unexpected developments like superstorm Sandy, a Fukushima-like event, or an oil price spike could easily send prices – and availability of goods – swiftly awry. For instance, the global drought continues, engulfing nearly 100% of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma in extremely dry conditions. The UN warns that prices worldwide could easily spike this year, as world grain stocks are near historic lows:

World food prices stabilized in January after falling in the previous three months, the United Nations food agency said on Thursday, but it warned that adverse crop weather could cause violent price spikes due to tight grains stocks.

Global food prices surged in mid-2012 following the worst U.S. drought in more than half a century and dry weather in other key grains exporters, raising fears of a food crisis similar to the one in 2008.

"The weather could turn negative, and because we are in a tight situation, prices could react violently and rise," FAO senior economist Abdolreza Abbassian said.

FAO raised its estimate for world cereal use in 2012/13 by 0.6 percent to 2.326 billion metric tons, up nearly 13 million metric tons from the 2011/12 season.

Sobering Thoughts

Sadly, this list could stretch longer if I didn't feel the need to end it here to avoid overloading the reader. But suffice it to say that there is certainly enough evidence to at least dispel a material amount of the sanguine outlook of those cheerleading for an offensive stance at this time.

Picking Your Side

Offense

Those taking the optimistic view here argue that our economic engine has been running hard to pull us out of the hole we've been in for the past five years. And now that we're back on level track, the engine's built-up head of steam is going to move us forward quickly.

If this future comes to pass, you won't want to be left in the dust as the party roars past. Get on the train – go long, perhaps with some leverage, and bet on America's grit and ingenuity.

To be frank, this has been the winning side for the past year and a half. Those who have sided with the bulls have been rewarded with sizable stock gains and stabilized (or growing) housing prices.

Defense

But if, on the other hand, you – like me – find enough reason in the data for doubting the optimistic case, you need to determine what your defensive plan should be.

The degree of defense you adopt should be based upon your own exploration of the data. Dig further than the samples I could only cursorily provide above. Come up with your own personal assessment of the probability and severity of the downside risks.

If you find you assess the risks at or above the 'moderate' level (which I do), then consider strongly the following guidance:

Exchange paper assets for tangible ones. Acquire exposure to the precious metals; we recommend having at least 10% of your net worth in gold and silver (for those new to owning precious metals, you may want to read our buyer's guide). Above that, if possible, invest in productive hard assets. Holdings like farmland, timberland, energy deposits, and mineral/water rightsareassets that will produce units that will generate an income for you.

Find a sympatico adviser to manage any remaining paper wealth. For many reasons, most of us will still keep a percentage of our wealth in the stock and bond markets (in retirement/pension accounts, 529 plans, etc). If you're in the defensive camp, make sure the adviser managing your money is, too. There are several we endorse, but we're impartial about whether you work with them or not. The important point here is to work with the adviser whose outlook is most closely aligned with yours.

Cultivate resiliency. Most Peak Prosperity readers are well-aware of our recommendations here. Start at the individual level to prepare both physically and emotionally so that whatever the future brings, your quality of life is as least impacted as possible.

Cultivate community. Whatever your plans, a support network will help you achieve them better, and likely faster, too. Plus, it gives you the added insurance of assistance should your best-laid plans not play out as you expect them to (which happens frequently). Invest in fostering collaborative relationships in your neighborhood, or join existing communities relevant to your location or interests.

Defend your income stream(s).Assess your employment situation – how vulnerable is your income? Explore ways to make yourself more valuable to your employer, add additional source(s) of income, and/or create your own business. Steady income makes challenging times much easier to bear by giving you the flexibility to explore different approaches that may work better for the new reality. Without that ability to absorb failure, your options are often much more limited.

If you take the above steps, regardless of what happens, you'll be able to sleep at night knowing that you've acted conscientiously according to your convictions. And in the event the bulls turn out to be 'right', few of these steps will serve you poorly. In a secular bull market, hard assets should still appreciate measurably. And personal and community resiliency is always a net positive, regardless of the economic environment.

But if the bulls turn out to be the ones in error, the value of these actions could be priceless.

So get to it. Do your own personal calculus of the risks. Determine where you need to be positioned. And take the necessary steps to get well-situated where you assess you need to be.

Comment viewing options

The only real choice is how you act individually during the collapse and pending liquidation. Avoiding the liquidation is an impossibility. There is no choice for that, that choice was made long ago before the author was even born.

The only real choices are these:

1.) Are you going to join in once the people start liquidating one another?

2.) Are you going to conform to the status quo during and after the liquidation of the unfunded liabilities in starting the same system over?

Other unfunded walking liabilities really don't have a choice as they will be liquidated before the choice is even available to them. What the author is talking about is not really choice, it's noise. Like worrying about getting the flu when a unstoppable asteroid is zooming pass the Moon on it's way to Earth.

"It's time to choose a side."

Sorry author, there is no side, there is an equation, the end result of the equation is collapse and liquidation of the non-performing unfunded liabiliites. What has been done has been done, not much I can do about other than to stay out of the way while the two sides whack each other.

Long term it seems the math is undeniable. The bulls would say we have more time before the liquidation is upon us. I think that it is wise to plan for the worst at this point since it is clear that the financial system will reset. This path allows you to free yourself of this huge lie and actually plan for a practical sustainable future at least at the individual level. I hope that after all the dust settles there is enough of society left to look at who is actually sucessful in the long run of things above and beyond the game of financial hopium we are currently playing.

the same thing happened in the 80s with the discovery of Prudhoe/N. Slope and the N. Sea. UK and USA were in collapse and incipient hyperinflation.

Then we reversed our oil production trends, for a time, and a new era of magic wtf prosperity broke out and we FORGOT why we were in such a malaise for so long. Both of us.

And we got busy on importing 3rd world primitive savage trash and fucked our societies as much as possible. Now, it seems the US has gotten a deadcat on our oil curve. So we will rebound because of that. That is all that really matters in growth economics, ok?

the money and the debt and all of that just RIDES the ability/power to DO things at a certain rate. Oil provides that.

The US's best course NOW is to inflate like shit, spend the money on solar power and LFRs, deport as many 3rd world primitive savage trash as possible, limit the birthrate of the remaining, and take itself back to standards of conduct and behavior and consumption of the 1950s.

otherwise, yeah, it's gonna go to shit like Haiti and Detroit did and El Salvador. Once you have critical mass of 3rd world savage trash, you end up there. Demographics are destiny.

What is your question. That God should choose to work through the weak and foolish? Or that God should be interested in confounding the strong and wise?

The Bible says that God accomplishes his will on earth, at least in part, by working through people. If he worked through the strong and wise, folks would point to the strength and/or wisdom of the doer and say that was responsible for the outcome. When God works through the weak and foolish, it is not possible to claim that the strength and/or wisdom of the doer was responsible for the outcome (since they have neither). God is more likely to get the credit in this situation. Type Gideon into Wikipedia for a discussion of this concept in action.

In the Bible, God gave Sampson unusual strength, so long as he didn't cut his hair. Likewise, God told Solomon he could ask for anything he wanted. Solomon asked for wisdom. The Lord was pleased that Solomon asked for wisdom rather than for wealth or a long life or judgement on his enemines. (1 Kings 3:5-12) So I've always been baffled by those who claim that God doesn't like strong/ smart/wise people. I'll leave it to someone else to explain why God would be interested in confounding the strong and the wise. Except to say that, perhaps God is only focused on those who claim that their strength and wisdom come from themselves - and is not focused at all on those who acknowledge that their strength and wisdom is a gift from God.

27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,29 so that no one may boast before him.

What about the "primitive savage trash" (your words) that emigrated to the US at the turn of the 20th century (early 1900s)? (E.G. Italians and Irish) How did they turn out?

The problem is that we are not forcing these "New Americans" to assimilate. Why it is that my great grandfather who emigrated to the US from the failed Austrian-Hungarian empire in 1902 forbid his children (my grandmother) to speak German? He wanted his children to be Americans, not German-Americans but Americans.

Why would the current crop of immigrants (illegal or otherwise) not make the same strides as the previous massive influx in (1900-1920)?

I try to take you with a grain of salt Trav but DAMN....actually...you know what...nevermind. It's people like you that teach people like me better self-control; so, thanks, I guess, for being a giant douche or troll, or whatever.Just remember: forcing people to be the way you think they should be is not freedom.

you can continue to persist in denial or at some point you can just face facts: forcing people to assimilate ONLY WORKS if they have COMPARABLE norms of conduct and behavior as you do!

It was easy for WHITES to assimilate other WHITES...whites have relatively close concepts of the social contract.

contrast that with africans who prefer rape to education for women. How the fuck are you going to assimilate that? It drags your society DOWN. And that is exactly what we see when we import savage 3rd world trash.

It wouldn't have fucking mattered what your grandfather did; he was a fucking german for fuck's sake; they are civilized.

Likewise, there are NO PROBLEMS with asians, are there? Even east indians are no fucking issue.

It's not IMMIGRANTS, dude, it's WHICH immigrants. Hatians live the way they do because that's how they ARE. You cannot just say Hey Mr. haitian, you ought to do things this way and he's gonna say, kind sir, that never occur to me, thank you very much!

WTF will it take for people to get that populations are just different? they look different, act different, THINK DIFFERENT. You cannot analogize to west africans what took place with germans or poles. They're not analogous.

I'm sorry but I'm a little confused here. You do know that one of the Japanese justifications for World War 2 was that the U.S. cut off all emigration from Japan in 1935 and 1936. They cut off all emigration from China a few years before that. Then the Manzanita nightmare that the U.S. Gov't can't stop apologizing for.

So Asians "in vogue" now as to their ability to assimilate? Nice to know.

Hmm - another point - I'm married to a half-white French woman - does half white qualify you to be able to assimilate in America? Oops I mean "half-brown" - does that disqualify her? I mean if half of her is an ignorant savage, wouldn't it be better if we deported her now? She was an illegal alien.....

It seems it is you who are a little confused, sir. The anti-Japanese/Chinese immigration acts had been going on much earlier than the 1930s...and by Manzanita, do you mean Manzanar? I guess they're all the same when your US history teacher gave you a pat on the head and an A for effort.

You also seem to be implying that the US government shouldn;t stop apologizing for Manzanar...they should be down on their knees morning, noon, and fucking night for stripping due process and half a dozen other componants of the Bill of Rights from US citizens. Especially since they're gearing up to do the whole thing over again.

It's a pity that your Austro-Hungarian progenitors did not also inculcate your family with a penchant for logic as well as a yen for the English language. Because then you would realize that your judgement is being clouded by emotion in the vein of "I married and am close to someone that I percieve someone else to be attacking therefore all his arguments are invalid."

"It wouldn't have fucking mattered what your grandfather did; he was a fucking german for fuck's sake; they are civilized."

You have carefully selected the operative definition of "civilized" to confirm your own idiotic opinion. You have elevated your preferences above all others. If you can do this, so can everyone else, whether you like it or not.

Yes, everyone can define the word civilized however they wish. That wasn't the point. This is: some civilizations are more valuable to the world in general than others. Not all civilizations are capable of feeding the world, healing the world, clothing the world. A civilization that can do any of these things (let alone all three at once) is more valuable to the world in general than those civilizations that cannot. We are not discussing the why of why some civilizations are less valuable (e.g., colonialism; dearth of natural resources and water, etc.). We are simply discussing the reality that some civilizations have less value to the entire world, on the whole, than other civilizations. Regardless of how you define civilization, what I have just stated is a fact.

Big Finance Capital is constrained only by one limit - the absolute max limit this Debt Money Tyranny Ponzi can sustain.

That's the end limit. If I were these criminals, I'd create a false flag event that would trigger the collapse of the economy and ahead of the absolute max limit so that I retained some control on the "when" of the collapse.

Say, blow up some ships in the Strait of Hormuz and blame Iran. This would send gas skyrocketing and the could constrict credit, collapse the economy and blame Iran. If they got lucky, they might be able to provoke Iran to blow something up and shut down the Strait.

The media would push that narrartive and the Muppets would blame government for being stupid about Middle East policy. Arrrrgh!

Right now I see massive societal "hack" programming. Everyone is said to be getting hacked - the Fed, Bush, etc...

It won't be surprising then, when your bank account is "hacked" and China is blamed.

The average loss in IQ was reported as a standardized weighted mean difference of 0.45, which would be approximately equivalent to seven IQ points for commonly used IQ scores with a standard deviation of 15.

On GoogleScholar.com, search "Effect of fluoride in drinking water on children's intelligence" and click on the first link. It should be a .DOC type file.

While many water supplies claim 1 PPM fluoride, you also get it in your food and extra amounts in your teas. If you exercise and drink lots of water, well, you are getting a lot more fluoride... and it bio accumulates with lots of nasty side effects including inhibiting melatonin production. But don't worry, Big Pharma will sell you something that can help you go to sleep now that they screwed up your natural system.

Look in your area to see who doesn't get the fluoride "goodies." In the San Diego area, Rancho Santa Fe and Poway don't get the fluoride "goodies." Rancho Santa Fe is one of the wealthiest enclaves on the West Coast. Poway is well above average in the wealth department, too. The banksters couldn't filter their toxic waste through Poway's children so they got the school board to fiscally string them up...

Investing in yourself is always a good idea. The first step to getting your life back is simply turning off the TV. There are 525,600 minutes in a year. You get about 350,400 of these minutes awake. What you don't spend on the road and at work leaves you with 131,400 minutes of your own. Giving half of your own time (3 hours a day) to television contributes to the decay of each and every American. Take back your life. Turn off the TV.

Is anyone else getting burned out by posts like this or am I the only one? I get it; the economy is tanked, the gov't is corrupt, we're fighting unwinnable wars, the sky is falling etc., etc. One can only stay in a state of fear and apprehension for only so long before exhaustion sets in. I know things are happening as we speak but I don't really know what to do about it and quite frankly, reading about these things is getting a bit tiresome. I will regret saying this but I'm ready for something to actually *happen*. Have a nice weekend.

"These posts make me more thankful each time that my money still buys things, and that there are still things to buy."

Gratitude feeds the Wheel of Good Fortune. Truly, we are living in the last dayz of Pompeii. Live well, prosper, and give thanks and grace for each simple blessing at the end of every day in old America.

""You have food and a roof over your head. Are you not rich?"

We have always said that there are two kinds of richness's in the world. One is at pocket, and one is at heart. One you take with you, and one you are only using to better the world or not. Always be glad to say you are rich at Heart when approaching the scales of MA-AT.

this is what I said in the thread where chavez just fucked Venezuelans by 46%. Be glad our forefathers and OUR PEOPLE built a nation powerful enough that we can print and not see everything we've saved vaporized like that.

He didn't say your forefathers built this travesty of a country. He said that your forefathers built a country powerful enough to withstand what it has become. Or, more specifically, powerful enough to withstand what the behaviors of its leaders has become.

You maybe can't see the difference between his statement and yours, but I can.

The author gave several ideas of what to do, at least a few of them were very good advice: physical precious metals, get out of debt and convert paper 'wealth' to real wealth before the liquidation kicks in full steam.

Some of us on ZH have already gone through the emotional cycle of change, and we're finally resolved to execute a personal plan of action and awaken others who are willing and courageous.

You just need to get through this cycle and then chart your course. Nobody knows definitively what will happen when, but you need to focus your efforts on preparing for the inevitable changes, whether they be far off or imminent.

I sit here in the NE and hear about all of nthese people freaking out and gathering supplies.....meanwhile, I already have them. I could be snowed in for weeks and be fine. Same thing goes for this economy. I was exhausted months if not years ago and I have done stuff about it......Prepare.

A Survival Reminder - if the water faucet suddenly stops working, before you panic remember that you have between 30 and 50 gallons of potable water in your water heater... unless you're one of those green freaks and bought an inline on demand water heater in which case (depending on the weather) - sucks to be you.

"grovel to your financial masters. beg for their favor...do what you are told. be a good citizen."

Or, plant a great Victory Garden and wait until they come to you with gold and silver etc in droves, while indicating you might trade with them. It's called farmers market and bartering in a supportive community. Heck, you could even start a food for guns program with the storm troopers.

There's line of people waiting at the door opening every Wednesday morning 9AM at Gander Mountain here in town to buy .223 / 5.56 x 45 MM ammo. Inside, the shelves are COMPLETELY out of this caliber, and almost all .22 ammo is gone too. Glad I bought mine in September.

I have no fucking clue what the fuck they envision doing with all those guns and all that ammo. If they have to hit The Road or madmax, how much of that shit do they HONESTLY think they can carry?

This isn't COD where you can pack missile launchers and hit R1 or is it triangle and just switch to a barret .50 and you have 200 rounds in everything. then you can hit it again and switch to yet another gun with 200 rounds or more.

nobody ever gets tired in video games...I think real life rambo wannabes buying all this ammo and silver out to try to do a bugout rehearsal with all this shit. fuckin morons

Directionally I agree Trav. The prepping with guns and ammo etc. will only be helpful during the brief period of civil unrest very early in the collapse -- the time when the angry mob is hungry and in the looting phase -- probably focused on electronics and booze for some odd reason I fail to understand but old habits die hard.

At some point, they will see 'your lights are on' or 'you have a fire' or 'you are eating real food' and that's when the guns will come in handy.

In the next and final phase, they will be completely worthless. When the gubbmint turns it's war machine inward, the civilian armamnents will be no more useful than pea shooters. Think that bug-out cave is safe against a drone with thermal sights? Or a C130 gunship with night vision? Puhlease... if/when the war machine is unleashed inward, it's mass liquidation and FEMA camps for the resistance.

Is there hope? Sure. The Oathekeepers give me hope. And those crafty enough to make it through give me hope. But this prepping nonsense that an AK or AR is going to keep a government at bay against their unfettered determination to retain power is sheer nonsense.

But dude! You gotta admit that those Doomsday Prepper shows where the people practice bugging out and they're packing the frickin' dog and dog food and everything but the bath tub are funny as hell!!! Saw one where they started out in an SUV (over-loaded) and then switched to a couple of inflatable rafts (with paddles) and it was only when standing there looking back and forth between at the rafts and all the crap they'd brought that they figured out that it wouldn't all FIT in the rafts - that the real world intruded on their fantasy world!!! I thought I was gonna die laughing!!!

I am popping blue pills until I need to pop the red pills. I stocked up on both pills, my particular circumstances require this stratergy if it was different I would give up the blue pills and only pop red pills.

All markets can act irrationally longer than you can stay solvent! Hedge accordingly.

1) But where are they digging?2) Mundane P/E ratios, and thats being dramatic.3) Since when was being normal ever a problem? 4) Housing does not need to rally to be stable.5) How long is a peice of string, balancing on the head of a pin, lost in a haystack?6) Since when did markets plan for external shocks? If a market took every potential extenal shock seriously, the S&P would be at 5.

My only point being, you can talk something down until you are blue in the chops, but when the time is right, the time is right. ZH will play a part in that, because when the folks on ZH start turing bullish...

And you don't have to buy into any sort of conspiracy theory to suppport that "monster" conclusion.

It has simply become too large. Whether good men or evil men are in charge, it is too large for anybody to change its course. It must eat to survive, and it feeds on money. It will go wherever it finds good grazing. There remains no way to peacefully restrain it.

It is too large to be nimble. It trample millions of its citizens without even trying, without even noticing. It is a mindless behemoth seeking only to feed, to live and to grow larger.

It is a shapeless, formless construct created from a limitless plethora of laws and regulations, too many for even an army of lawyers to comprehend, making each and every one of us criminals for one unknown reason or another, awaiting only the decision of some powerful man to condemn us.

It slouches, ever growing, towards a certain future,the arrival of which is the only great unknown.

The housing market is still in its Bubble Glory from what I can see when you compare it to wage stagnation and joblessness. When it corrects another 40% down....then we can say, "the RE market has lost its former glory."

translation offence= maximium unicorn everything is as real as the the unicorn and will be just as magicial. defence keep stacking in your bunker and watch out for drones and sheeple coming to take your stuff

Why does half of the list on the "Defensive Team" assume I have any fucking money? Burn into a poor family that thought they were rich later in life and now swim in debt and despite my every precaution to avoid that same fate the system keeps pushing me towards it.

Clearly this list is for old rich white men that aren't in the good 'ol boy club. I wonder if Adam Taggart is a veteran that has seen combat or has ever visited a truly destitute nation to realize people can get by on a helluva lot less, much less broken bread with any of those people.

Guess I'll just give some money to Rachel Fox and ask her nicely to invest it for me.

Oh, god ... my stress level is going off the charts, especially since we turned over into 2013. i know it's gonna be bad. & this collapse is a deliberate event. TPTB are using the bankruptcy for profit business model on the whole country with complicit, treasonous politicians. those bullets are for us. those drones are for us. i've read that this time in history will be spoken about for centuries to come. i knew something wasn't right for years, i wondered how people could afford all this stuff. a few years ago when i started figuring out what the heck was going on & started reading, studying & researching i made my choice......... i bought gold & silver & a gun. the gov't has to shrink dramatically, pre-1900 style in order to free the rest of us. BRING IT ON YOU TREASONOUS TRAITORS!! I MADE MY CHOICE.

there's a saying in Mexican spanish that loosely translates into "english is the language of the dogs" and many will NEVER speak it.

a good friend of mine (who's Mexican and PISSSED) brought this up cause in Obama's immigration bill there is an allowance for the 11,000,000 to bring over immediate family members...and according to him that means 47,000,000 more NON ENGLISH speaking immigrants.